New Art

Monday, June 6, 2005

The subtle dance of drawing

The Past is Behind. That is the title of this little drawing by L.A.-based artist Mel Kadel. I look at it carefuly. Something about it is quite disturbing. The past. The past is on the right side. You see, in Western culture we read time as we read text: from left to right. Our past is on the left, and our future - on the right. Well, here, the rules are different (as they should be on the real moon). Either time moves the other way, or, maybe, the girl is jumping, setting off, being blown away, and the past is whatever she dares to look at in the right-most position. But then probably this is the moon, and she is landing her jump, and when she falls she looks down, at the ground, not behind her. In any case, the past is absent. Not even a shadow to count it. This abstract landing is, of course, a dance, full of grace and asbent-minded, as only a dance can be. Did I say there was no shadow? I was wrong. There is one poignant shadow: on the face of the girl, as she is flying highest. So the sun is on the right. Behind.

There are many other drawings by Mel Kadel I really like. Here are some examples:

girl with bicycle wheel shoes #2

summersaulting

The Park

Some of her drawings remind me of Linda Zacks, others, of the great Lithuanian-Polish artist Stasys I have to write about some time. The latter might have a different technique, but there is just something about the way of seeing the world, the birds...

(Stasys)

(Mel Kadel)

...and horses...

(Stasys)

(MelKadel)

...that really makes me feel good.

Polish Easter, Mel Kadel

(via)

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Welcome new readers!

I was really happy to find out this blog was recommended by the hispanic (Colombian) magazine Semana. To those of you streaming in from there: this blog has a fairly primitive structure - it is not ordered by themes or tags. Please forgive the linearity, and try exploring the archives (see sidebar), as well as making use of the Google searchbox. Any comments, also to the older articles, are always welcome! As you can see, I post new things on average once a day.

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Poster for a show

(part 1)

(part 2)
(this is the poster for the performance I'm directing. It is also the excuse for not having written as much as I would like recently.)

Louise Bourgeois about modern art

Which artists do you like?
I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And also, Bacon is not self-indulgent. Some people will say, "What do you mean by that? He always paints the same picture." That's true - he always paints the same picture, because he is driven. But he is not self-indulgent. Never.

(...)what does modern art as such mean to you?
What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. This is why modern art will continue, because this condition remains; it is the modern human condition. (...) [Modern art] is about the hurt of not being able to express yourself properly, to express your intimate relations, your unconscious, to trust the world enough to express yourself directly in it. It is about trying to be sane in this situation, of being tentatively and temporarily sane by expressing yourself. (...) It is about the difficulty of being a self because one is neglected. Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

- Louise Bourgeois (interview with Donald Ksupit, 1988)

Left-handed art: Walter Benjamin

These days one cannot cling to his own specialty. Improvisation is always the high card. The crucial moves will always be made with the left hand.

- quoted from memory, my translation of a Portuguese translation of Walter Benjamin.

I'm not really sure if it was meant to be a critique or just a statement of a fact, but it made me think. Aren't the "post-avant-gardes" based on the principle of innovation? Isn't the idea of having to be new and different exactly the "left-handed trick" attitude?
So what we might be living is an art world of right-handed painters, sculptors, poets, writers, theater directors, that all create works with their left hand, because "that's the trick"?